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Here’s something from the embarrassed and ashamed section of my Netflix queue.

We’re watching the “Degrassi High” series and there’s nothing like hearing the endless litany of “Suurries” and seeing Amanda “Spike” Stepto’s beautiful haircut.

What can I say about “Degrassi”?

For some of us growing up in Jesusland there were a lot of questions that didn’t get answered questions that, well, concern hormones, and girls, and, uhm, Kotex. To be fair, it’s not because my parents were prudish, religious, or too–embarrassed to talk, but there are some things you just want to not to have to ask about.

“Degrassi” provided that outlet, or input.

In the first episode we deal with the topics of:

• Abortion
• Pregnancy Test
• Teen pregnancy
• Periods

In other episodes we cover:

• Handicap accessibility
• Breaking up
• “Just Being Friends”
• Abusive friends
• The utter baloney of content in girl magazines

in a realistic, sensible, neutral way. The dialog, while delivered through a lens woodenly, is legitimate dialogue through the issues: Pro is given, con is given, traditional is given, moderate is given, and the characters make a decision that, while you may disagree with it, is understandable.

Instead of the topics being over–emotionally they’re dealt with in a polite and, well, Canadian manner ( “please, thank–you, and sourrey”)—even the girlfriend-batterer say “could I please speak with you” before the beating commences.

Footnote:

1. This is a pale, weak version, in text, to capture the Canadian accent’s infamous “sorry”.

Here’s a grammatical question I have had lately:

The first sentence should seem fairly pedestrian and intelligible..

“The sales associate, whose business card I have at home, did a great job showing the elegance and sophistication of Mac OS X”

In this statement, the clause in the appositive (the bit between commas) modifies the subject, “the sales associate”. Now we refer to people by “who” and object by “what” or “which”. Therefore “whose” is based off of “who” and corresponds to a statement about a person.

My question comes about when speaking in a parallel construction as the above about an inanimate object.

“The new server in the data center, ______ IP address I need, runs the elegant and fast Mac OS X.”

You see, I want to use “whose” in that slot, but a machine, even one that runs Mac OS X, is no person. Mice and I agreed that an alternative construction might be:

“The new server in the data center, the IP address of which I need, runs the elegant and fast Mac OS X”.

Yes, that works, but gets a bit clumsy. What oh what could be the word that goes in that slot?

Well, it turns out that it is: “whose”. The guidline of “who is for people, wha/that is for things” is, in the words of “Pirates of the Carribbean” more like a guideline.

Now let us ask, what part of speech and function is the underlined “whose”. Merriam-Webster says:

Main Entry: 1whose Pronunciation: ‘h?z, ?z Function: adjective Etymology: Middle English whos, genitive of who, what : of or relating to whom or which especially as possessor or possessors <whose gorgeous vesture heaps the ground — Robert Browning>, agent or agents <the law courts, whose decisions were important — F. L. Mott>, or object or objects of an action <the first poem whose publication he ever sanctioned — J. W. Krutch>

(emphasis mine)

There you have it: “of what anything (person / thing)” is expressed by “whose”.

Thus, to close the loop:

“The new server in the data center, whose IP address I need, runs the elegant and fast Mac OS X.”

Update:

In response to a comment I found a site which encourages the use of ‘whose’ to refer to inanimate objects. The author notes that doing so seems to be a shibboleth for good writers versus bad. [ LINK ]

I got a call from Heavenly saying they found my wallet. Great!

While I’ve already cancelled and re-ordered the credit cards, I’ll be glad to get my wallet, space pen inside, and my picture DL back.

Well I’m back from a long weekend in LT. I went up Thursday evening with my co-workers and we went out to eat at the Hard Rock and did some gaming that evening. I lost $100. I was chagrinned (but not too much) about this.

Friday we got up and hit the slopes at Heavenly. We were in the middle of a pretty strong gust with snow falling all morning. I had waxed my board early that morning and really enjoyed being out there. The crowds hadn’t braved the weather and I got in some great runs on about 4” of pristine powder.

We returned that evening and I was exhausted. After a shower and a fancy dinner out at a restaurant where the waiter totally copped an attitude with me (won’t be returning, “Fresh Ketch”) I retired straightaway.

I woke up the next morning and watched “Hannie Caulder” on AMC with a few of the earlier-rising co-workers.

I really liked Raquel Welch’s performance and had to laugh at some of the more exploitative scenes (including her shrinking rubber britches to fit by soaking in water).

I headed up to the mountain again with just one other friend (only we two were that hungry for punishment) and we had a great day …. with tons of other people.

Nevertheless fun is where you find it and we had a great time running through the trees and powder - it was a lot of fun and a new challenge. I really felt good about my skill on mogul’d terrain. This has always been a real challenge for me and to be able to navigate some of the black diamond chutes was a real kick.

Amid all this joy I managed to lose my wallet.

That sucked. Fortunately I had moved my cash to a different pocket so I was not penniless (will sysadmin with bad attitude for food?).

The irony of this is that my partner works for a firm whose services my group has retained and he offered to buy me lunch. I gallantly and politely refused insisting that I pay for myself, thus begetting the taking out of walllet, thus the begetting of putting it (or so i thought) in my jacket pocket, thus begetting the loss. Note to self: Next time take the free lunch.

So upon returning to the condo I started cancelling credit cards etc. (no illicit use, thankfully!)

While others headed back to the casino (maybe the loss was meant to prevent me from further gaming loss?), myself and 4 others went into town and ate up thence to watch “Hero” on DVD in one of the condos. I was pretty exhausted (again) and headed to bed. This morning I woke up early and packed and we got home around 1.

All in all it was a fun trip …. now all i have to do is visit the DMV and wait for my new cards to arrive. * grumble *

Mike at whybark has posted the resolution to the tale of Hopkin Green Frog, a bit of an internet meme back earlier this year.

It’s a bit sadder than the idealists and Romantics of the blogosphere would have had…but it’s the truth and it usually has a sad sort of beauty.

Hopkin, the mystertious Terry was brought into my life by you and the internet, the internet has removed Terry, but may you carry on good Hopkin, ribbiting your way to a destiny unknown to us.

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Check them out: Rilo Kiley

Merlin gave this as a doorprize at the 43Folders Meetup in San Francisco.

See, go to meetups, meet cool blogger-types { [1][2][3], see new toys, and learn about new technology

Unburdening the Tivo…..

The Killers ROCKED. When they come out to the bay I am going to be there.

Topher Grace was really funny as well.

My favorite sketch was the visit to the art dealers’ apartments and when Amy Poehler menaced Angelina Jolie.

When iFly iRead When iFly iPod

So what did iRead? I finished off

Quicksilver

What can you say about a Neal Stephenson book?

Some Dude: “Hey so what’s that book about?” Me: Well, it’s set during the time of the economic revolutionization of Europe — no wait they didn’t call it Europe yet, Christondom. You see it’s about the discovery of the principles of the calculus, early years of cryptography and William of Orange’s battle against Louis the XIV and the Popist Stuart kings of England… (etc.)

You get the idea. Stephenson’s sweep is so wide, so well researched, funny, in-depth, complicated, etc. All I can say is I love his stuff. I look forward to reading the next book in the series: The Confusion …. but not for a while — I need some space.

I also read the Pulizer-winning The Price of Loyalty: The Education of Paul O’Neil

It fleshed out things we already knew: The Bush Administration is close-minded, the Bush administration is ideolegically obsessed with tax cuts despite facts, the Bush administration’s advisors wanted war with Iraq come hell or high water and they cynically used fear tactist post-9/11 to get what we wanted.

Financially irresponsible, ideologically dangerous, here we are.

‘Twas a nice read - I’d let O’Neill stop by for a cup of joe any day.

The last book I read was Paul Graham’s Hackers & Painters. This was a great book about the people at the edge of creativity and their ability to produce massive innovations.

I’m a big believer in the notion of creative economies driving the American economic engine … there exist a few special places where intelligent people create synergies - Florence 1400, Amsterdam 1640, New York City 1960-present, etc - that open up whole new areas of technology and capability.

Graham puts this thesis forth in a very eloquent fashion, talking about the unique vapor of commerce, art, creativity, and social liberty that is required to do the truly miraculous. It was a great read.

So much of the aforementioned Quicksilver is dedicated to the formation of the highly liquid hallucination that we refer to as “the market” (really, it’s very much like that other consensual hallucination “the internet” instead of flows of data it’s flows of currency — but Quicksilver shows how the two are really the same thing…or I think that’s what all of Stehpenson’s work is trying to show..), reading Hackers and Painters immediately after was a great complimentary dish to the ideas of Stephenson.

The biggest problem with videos these days is that they’re made by people used to directing commericals……not former (or current) art students.

The videos are glossy, the singers toned, the clothing predictable risqu?e….

Art student directors loved playing with light, or shadow, or costume, lasers or letting the singers be unattractive and passionate.

Bah.